Claire Taylor was named as the ICC Women's Cricket of the Year in 2009, capping a remarkable year as part the England Women's Cricket team. She was the first woman to be named as one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year in 2009 and was twice Player of the Tournament as England won the ICC One Day and Twenty20 World Cups.
Outside of cricket, Claire works as a Management Consultant in the higher education sector. Other interests include reading, cooking and playing the violin for the Aldworth Philharmonic Orchestra.

All to play for as England Women head for decider

This is going to be a very tight series. As we saw in the Twenty20 matches, the teams are fairly evenly matched and two of the games went down to the wire. And so it was with the first two one-day matches.

After our outing against Ireland in Kibworth, we knew that the New Zealand team would be a challenge on a much higher level. Katherine Brunt continued her good form in the Ireland game with a very hostile spell of quick bowling. Clare Shillington, their opening bat, struggled with the pace and sustained a broken arm in the opening overs.

Off the pitch I got to experience the other side of the microphone in Kibworth; I conducted an impromptu interview with coach Mark Lane after the Ireland game for ECB TV. All that media training was put to good use when after a quick ten second preparation period I “grilled” Mark about his thoughts on the game and the upcoming NatWest Women’s Series.

Game one of the series took place at Taunton on Saturday. We lost the toss and the Kiwis elected to bat first. Our bowling and fielding was good and we kept them down to 231 from 50 overs. We made the chase much more difficult than it should have been after solid middle order stands between captain Charlotte Edwards and Jenny Gunn and Laura Marsh respectively.

We’re playing with batting and bowling powerplays in this series and they’re not something that we always get right. In this game though we played the batting powerplay to perfection; we took it at the right time and plundered 56 runs from those five overs which set up the rest of the chase perfectly. Sometimes batsmen get too excited about hitting boundaries and teams lose wickets cheaply during the powerplay; it’s a fine balance to strike.

The second game took place at the same venue two days later. This time England batted first and once again the batters struggled to impose themselves on the Kiwi bowling. Lydia Greenway and I shared a good partnership in the middle of the innings but were both run out in quick succession by direct hits from the infield. After that we fell away and only set 209 for victory.

That the Kiwis made it six wickets down was testament to some fight from our bowling and fielding attack, but we missed a couple of chances and could have put them under more pressure.

So it’s one all then, and both teams have travelled to Derby for the 3rd NatWest Women’s One day International, under lights tomorrow. The series is poised and hopefully the rain will stay away at Derby and then Barnsley on Saturday, July 17, to give a positive result one way or the other.